Abstract
The type and condition of the wheat milled to obtain flour for breadmaking can certainly influence the final taste of the product. First of all, wheat must be “healthy, sound and marketable,” according to the time-honored French expression. To meet these basic criteria, it must not have been exposed to excessive humidity, and it must show no evidence of all the consequences that may result from such exposure, such as the odors of wet straw, mildew, or heat damage as a result of fermentation or sprouting. Since these odors are detectable in the finished flour, it is certain that they spoil the taste of bread to a greater or lesser degree. The same is true in regards to the accidental presence of insects or any foreign odors that might become apparent.
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Notes
In spite of this general statement, Professor Calvel has shown numerous times that it is certainly possible to make very good bread with higher-protein North American flours, both U.S. hard red winter wheat flour and the even higher-protein Canadian hard spring wheat flour. Bread production based on these wheats certainly requires proper attention to flour blending in order to achieve proper baking characteristics, and also makes systematic bake testing of flour lots absolutely necessary. For a discussion of Professor Calvel’s pioneering efforts in this area, see the articles printed in Boulanger-Pâtissier and listed in the bibliography, especially those that describe his work at Kansas State University in the 1980s and in Japan.
It has been written that ash content figures are of more interest to millers than to bakers on a daily basis, since ash content can be used as an indication that milling equipment is properly adjusted.
This instrument is used somewhat rarely in North America. Several other tests are widely used to test wheat flour properties. For a discussion of wheat flour testing methods in North America, see the numerous papers and test methods available from the American Association of Cereal Chemists (AACC). Extensive references are available on the AACC web site, currently located at http://www.scisoc.org/aacc/.
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Calvel, R. (2001). Flour. In: The Taste of Bread. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-6809-1_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-6809-1_1
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